Just a Myth
by Twilight Scribe
Summary: It was a just a myth, only an urban legend, but Spider-Man still felt his breath catch in his chest. Could those coins be his? The ones he lost? He had been at least twenty stories up when he accidentally dropped them...


Disclaimer: I may not own Spider-Man, but I am _this close_ to sewing my own costume and starting my crime-fighting career.

AN: As (almost) always with my Spider-Man fiction, this story is set in the classic comic universe, though I did include a reference to the first movie-based game. (It was horrible, but it had a few good lines.)

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Rooftops are cold, the tops of skyscrapers especially so. To someone dressed only in a thin, skin-tight costume the combination of freezing temperature and wind can be torturous. The only positive aspects of sitting on tall buildings are the view, the city stretching out below, its lights absolutely stunning on late-night patrols, and the solitude. Spider-Man was no stranger to brooding on rooftops; he had more than his share of traumas to brood about after all. Today his chosen roost was the spire of the Chrysler Building. He sat with his back and feet adhered to the chilly metal, lost in his thoughts.

"All right self, first off, just why am I up here? I just beat Doc Ock. I've got dozens of bruises, cuts, scrapes, and other hurty things... What reason do I have to be here on a freezing rooftop when I could be at home, patching myself up and eating a delicious, hot dinner cooked by my beautiful, loving wife?"

It took a few seconds, but Spider-Man finally connected the uneasy vibes he had been feeling from his spider-sense with the problem at hand. If any of the people walking below had looked up, they would have seen the red-clad figure smack himself on the forehead, as if to punish his brain for not putting the pieces together earlier.

"Oh no, Mary Jane! How could I forget? She didn't get to see how the fight ended."

The fight with Doctor Octopus had been long and brutal, with a heaping helping of collateral damage on the side. Somewhere near the end of the struggle Ock managed to get a hold of Spider-Man and use him as an arachnid wrecking ball, destroying all the news cameras within reach. The bad doctor also took out every news van he could lay his tentacles on and used them as projectiles to discourage news and police helicopters from coming in close.

Spider-Man still had no idea why Ock had been so inhospitable to the media (Well, he actually did, with all the bad press he'd gotten over the years...) but the important thing was that last thing the cameras broadcasted, the last thing MJ saw, was her husband being tossed around by a metal-armed maniac.

"She must be worried sick, I should call her to tell her I'm okay. Right after I stop talking to myself. I swear, it must be a superhero thing. I've never met a metahuman who didn't talk to themselves."

Detaching himself from the spire, he scuttled down to settle on one of the building's many spiky protrusions. As he swept the streets below for a payphone, he fished a couple quarters out of his pocket and began to toss them up and catch them again. It was something to do while he looked, and looked, and looked. Try as he might, the amazing Spider-Man couldn't locate a telephone.

"Oh, come on Spidey! You know this town like the back of your webbed glove. How is it possible that you can't find a simple pay phone? Ugh... And now I am talking, to myself, yet again. Great."

Just as he was about to swing off in search of a phone, an intense blast of spider-sense screamed of a deadly threat racing from behind him. Leaping to his feet and twisting to face the danger, Spider-Man was unpleasantly surprised to find that his senses hadn't been warning him of and incoming bullet or a pumpkin bomb lobbed at the back of his head. The buzz had been warning him about a strong gust of wind, powerful enough to fling the unprepared hero off his perch and send him hurtling through space.

Even in freefall hundreds of feet in the air above the unforgiving concrete streets, when a normal human would have been screaming in terror and wetting themselves, Spider-Man was completely calm. This was what he did best.

It took barely a second to accurately judge the distance and mentally crunch out the necessary calculations, then Spider-Man was ready. He did an aerial about-face and aimed a webline at the side of the Chrysler building. The sticky polymer anchored securely, stretched slightly, but held as it converted the webslinger's downward momentum into an arc to swing him back to the relative safely of the building's side.

It seemed as if fate was on Spider-Man's side for once. Not only did he cheat gravity and save himself from becoming a squished spider on the pavement below; he had managed to do it with only one hand. The quarters he was tossing around earlier were still safely enclosed in his other hand. He would get to make his phone call, eventually. All these triumphant thoughts flitted through Spider-Man's mind as he let his web swing him back towards the concrete wall of the Chrysler Building. Then, all hell broke loose.

With a mere ten feet between him and his goal, Spider-Man's spider-senses blared another warning that was too late, even for him, to react to. A second blast of wind slammed into his side, driving him off course and into a crash landing with the very, very solid concrete. A far cry from the graceful touchdown he had envisioned. The sudden and violent impact jolted Spider-Man off the end of his web and sent him sliding down the building's exterior, desperately scrambling to find a purchase every inch of the way.

As the distance between him and the hard ground continued to shrink at an alarming rate, the webslinger gave up and let fly two weblines. They attached to the wall with a soft splat and Spider-Man breathed a small sigh of relief. This time, with two anchor points instead of one, he was able to swing to a safe, if harsh, stop.

"Whoo... Forget a phone, I'm gonna go find a nice, quiet place and have a heart attack. Maybe grab a ham sandwich on the way... That sounds good."

Hanging there with his feet braced against the cold glass and concrete, catching his breath, Spider-Man wondered just where his fifty cents ended up after he had been forced to drop it to shoot his webs. It wasn't a major issue, hardly a priority at all. His life was far more valuable than half a dollar; it would just have been interesting to know. Did it fall onto some ledge of the building? Did the wind pick it up and carry it away? If the gusts were strong enough to buffet him around, imagine what they would do to a little coin...

Whatever happened to the cash, he didn't care enough to investigate. Preparing to swing off again, this time to just go home and reassure MJ himself, Spiderman gave a cursory glace in all directions to make sure nothing else was currently flying in the space he was about to occupy (a very legitimate concern in New York City), he noticed what was going on beneath him at ground level and felt his heart stop. Down on the street an emergency was unfolding and he'd been too busy saving his own skin to notice.

Swallowing his guilt, Spider-Man web-zipped the rest of the way down the side of the building. Once he was closer, he could make out just what had happened.

The victim, a balding man in his mid-sixties, lay unconscious on the sidewalk, a small dribble of blood oozing from his temple. A woman, who Spider-Man assumed was the old codger's girlfriend, stood nearby. She seemed stunned, but not so out of it that she couldn't gabber hysterically to someone on her cell phone as she watched the paramedics lift the man onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.

Thinking that there was nothing he could do to help now that the crisis was all but over, Spider-Man turned to leave, but stopped when a shiny spot on the ground caught his eye. Lying near the bloodstains on the sidewalk, glinting in the light of the setting sun, were two quarters. Spider-Man felt his breath catch in his chest. Could those coins be his? The ones he lost? He had been at least twenty stories up when he accidentally dropped them...

"No, no way. Being killed by coins thrown off of skyscrapers is just an urban legend. They disproved it on Mythbusters. There's no way..."

But the evidence was there. No matter how unlikely it seemed, Spider-Man couldn't help but feel he was at fault, but enough was enough. With a final look at the quarters and a shake of his head, Spider-Man climbed up a couple of stories, then leapt from the side of the building. He was tired, aching, and utterly done with being Spider-Man for the day so he angled his swings to take him in the direction of Soho, and raced towards the loft where he knew a very worried lady was waiting for him.

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AN: Yes, even Spider-Man watches Mythbusters. All the cool people do.

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End file.
